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Is prostitution always exploitative? As I was recently reminded in my "Gender & International Human Rights" class, this is a question that continues to provoke considerable debate even among individuals who uphold feminist principles. For many feminists, the idea that women may choose to engage in sex work is beyond the realm of possibility, given the structural conditions that inform the positioning of women as the performers of paid sexual labor, and men as the buyers and owners of this labor. Prostitution is, from this perspective, the ultimate expression of the exploitation of women and any effort to decriminalize prostitution as a means of reducing associated harms is adamantly rejected.

For others, sex work has the potential to be liberating and empowering, employed by women as a strategy to secure their economic independence. For these feminists, to leave no space at all for making a distinction between prostitution and forced prostitution is to deny women's agency and their ability to make individual choices based on their life circumstances.

In the two essays that follow, Ally Jurkovich, Liz Kramer, and Lara Spade continue the conversation started in my class, all convincingly defending their respective point of view. Perhaps more than anything, what these essays illustrate is the difficulty of generalizing women's experiences across lines of "difference" and the need to probe the complexity that lies somewhere between the two poles of the debate.

Laura Hebert




Prostitution is an archaic institution based on principles inherent to the subjection of women. Its legalization would legitimize patterns of male dominance and legally confirm conceptions of women as sexual objects. The decision of whether or not to legalize prostitution affects millions of women and girls. Some feminists argue for prostitution's sexually liberating and economically empowering merits, but where one woman benefits, millions suffer. Evelina Giobbe, a women's rights activist, defines prostitution as "any industry in which women's or children's bodies are bought, sold, or traded for sexual use and abuse." Prostitution is essentially the economic legitimization of women's exploitation and subordination. This being said, it is important to recognize that prostitution is not an industry solely based on sexual interaction, but rather a highly gendered, and abusive sexual exploitation.

Women have been and continue to be economically subordinate to men in the public and professional sphere. Prostitution is no different, and as an unskilled industry it is often a last resort for women facing poverty. Furthermore, it is important to note the racial and socioeconomic connotations of such a profession. In a world where money equals power, women are often at a loss; lacking power, control, and financial autonomy. Legalizing prostitution, however, is not providing a means for economic advancement, but perpetuating gendered norms of women's subordination by allowing an industry based on male power and female submission. As British feminist Carole Pateman suggests, prostitution is not a "mutual, pleasurable exchange of the use of bodies, but the unilateral use of a woman's body in exchange for money."

The universal dehumanization and objectification of women is so deeply rooted and widespread that prostitution's mere legalization will not change the nature of socialized discrimination against women. Instead, legalization perpetuates and reinforces a cycle of male dominance and silences abuse against women. In an attempt to promote prostitution as a legitimate occupation, individuals paint a glorified picture of sex work as an idealistic expression of sexuality and empowering use of one's own body. In reality, however, where sex work has been legitimated, in the form of pornography and strip clubs, working conditions suffer overwhelming discrepancies. Clubs range from the high-class parlors of Amsterdam to desolate dark rooms on Sunset Boulevard.

It is important to remember that prostitution deals not only with the sale of women's bodies, but children's as well. While some women have voiced their experiences within prostitution as a personal and pleasurable decision, for most, entry into the industry is not a choice. In fact, according to the Coalition Against the Trafficking in Women, "most women in prostitution are trafficked into the industry as children [and] worldwide, the average age of entrance into prostitution is 13."

Acknowledging the role of children within sex work further illustrates the forced nature of the industry. Legalization alone will not eradicate the "use and abuse" of women's bodies, and will not stop the illegal exploitation of children. On the contrary, legalization of adult prostitution further perpetuates the normalization of the female body as a sexual object and commodity. Furthermore, it is impossible in most cases to distinguish prostitution from sex trafficking. As Dorchen Leidholdt, Co-executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, suggest, sex trafficking and prostitution overlap in fundamental ways. "Those targeted for commercial sexual exploitation share key characteristics: poverty, youth, minority status in the country of exploitation, histories of abuse, and little family support."

Recognizing the importance of female ownership of the body and sexual expression, we stand firm on the premise that prostitution, as an institution, is inherently harmful and destructive to women. Most, if not all feminist arguments for prostitution's legalization are theoretically rational. The only problem is that they are idealist and inconsequential for the millions of women and girls working in exploitative sex work that is neither empowering nor a self-determined occupation.

The negative effects of prostitution far outweigh its utopian benefits. Women living in systems of prostitution need to be given support through education, job training opportunities, and the inclusion of their concerns and opinions in feminist platforms. The right to one's body is an important fight toward gender equity, but it is an empowered decision to be made by and for the individual and not a patriarchal system of female subjection.

Ally Jurkovich & Liz Kramer




Exploitation in the sex industry, as in any other industry, does exist. Yet there are many feminist theorists, such as Alison Jaggar, who make the mistake of treating all sex work the same. The statement that all sex work is exploitive operates under the sweeping generalization that any work that includes sex must be fundamentally similar to all other forms of sex work. This is short-sighted and ineffective because, as Sex for Sale author Ronald Weitzer suggests, to refuse sex work the benefit of its intricacies is to ignore the "different kinds of worker experiences and varying degrees of victimization, exploitation, agency, and choice." Not only are the motives different for each kind of sex work, but the potential for workplace hazards is also different. It is generally assumed that rape is a common hazard of sex work, and not surprisingly, street workers encounter rape and the threat of rape quite frequently. However, in a study conducted by the Australian Institute of Criminology on members of COYOTE, a sex workers' rights group, 95% reported never having been forced into sex work and 71% had never experienced any work-related violence.

While other industries have labor laws, unions, and representation in place to safeguard workers from exploitation, sex workers have no such structure of support. Due to the misguided notion that all prostitution is exploitive, there are no fail safes for sex workers: no labor unions, no minimum wage standards, no overtime, no overseeing authority to protect their well-being, and no protections geared toward this specific kind of work. Instead, the surprising alliance of feminists and religious and political conservatives have forced the sex industry into the black market, which by its very nature is designed to exploit. The precise institutions, particularly feminism and legislation, that should have been the champions of women's right to safety in their workplace and in the nature of their work, have relegated their work to illegitimacy and sleaze. It is this narrow-minded diminution of honest work, not the work itself, that has fueled the exploitation of sex workers.

While the well-intended brand of radical feminism championed by such figures as Andrea Dworkin and Katherine McKinnon propose that it is saving women sex workers from exploitation, the puzzling reality seems to be that they are intent on saving women from themselves. According to Norma Jean Almodovar, "The word 'exploitation' is a subjective and condescending term, which when combined with 'sexual' becomes a politically explosive concept promoted by radical feminists, legislators, and religious conservatives to denote what they consider to be the infantile mental capacity of those whom these groups have deemed to be the 'exploited.'" If women cannot make their own decisions then someone must make those decisions for them, but who will do that? Their fathers? Husbands? State representatives? Interestingly enough, according to Judge Maggs of Spokane county, police officers in the course of their work are legally allowed to engage in sexual activity with prostitutes in order to arrest them without it being considered entrapment, a policy that would enrage the general public if it pertained to any other crime or even traffic offenses.

It seems that many of the arguments against prostitution stem from a perceived lack of choice. If this is the case, there are women, such as Almodovar, a former police officer, who freely choose to be sex workers. While feminist theorists like Jagger would argue that any choice a woman makes to be a sex worker is governed by the brainwashing that she received as a young girl, the career progression of Almodovar, illustrates, without confusion, that sex work can be a healthy and empowering choice. There was neither coercion nor exploitation for her, just one choice among a number of options.

Thus, the statement that all prostitution is exploitation is nothing but the offensive assertion that women lack the fundamental ability to make their own healthy, safe decisions about their own bodies. The "exploitation argument" has begun to sound uncomfortably similar to the hackneyed arguments for denying women an education (for their own good), the right to vote (for their own good), and access to birth control (for their own good.) Sex work is only exploitive when there is no authority to safeguard against abuse, trafficking, and unsafe work conditions. While the radical feminists and religious right rhapsodize about saving women, they are doing nothing but forcing women into the very exploitation that they wish to save women from. This society does not need to be saved from sex work, it is sex work and sex workers who need to be saved from the oppression of the anti-prostitution feminists.

Lara spade

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